


The Artist

by KyDesert



Series: I wish you knew me [1]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Amanda is evil but that's not new, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Language, Gen, Good Parent Hank Anderson, Hurt/Comfort, Obsessive Behavior, Temporary Amnesia, he's just trying his best, i didnt mean for it to turn out like this i swear, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-06-14 08:54:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15385236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KyDesert/pseuds/KyDesert
Summary: "Sometimes, you’ve gotta fight your own battles, kid.”And fight he did while he lay on Hank’s sofa, swaddled in blankets and unable to move. Too hot, but much, much too cold. Motionless while the last of CyberLife’s programming tore through his systems and made his hands ache to complete one final mission.Damn did Hank wish he could be there to help the kid fight this one.





	1. on a palace floor I see my soul

Hank knows that Connor... can draw. He’d have no issue creating a perfect rendition or any image, no problem with outlining every little bit of evidence at a crime scene or every feather of some street pigeon. The attention to detail is an integral part of his programming and it didn’t fade with his deviancy. Hell, it makes both of their jobs a hell of a lot easier, and Hank’s seen it with his own eyes, watched as Connor’s brain or processors or whatever fired up to move his hand seamlessly across the page leaving behind a photorealistic copy. 

It’s freaky, to say the least, but Connor doesn’t seem to have a flare for the creative arts, he likes just the facts, and Hank’s okay with that. Makes it easier to know that his android adoptee isn’t going to try to become a starving artist. He’s okay with the predictability that comes with Connor’s strict attention to evidence, to facts, to statistics.    
  
He’s not sure he’s okay with the foggy scribbles he’d found stuffed hastily in the trash, or the smudged ink on his dining room table. He guesses Connor thought he’d been hiding them well, stuffing them at the bottom of the trash can and scrubbing the remnants of sharpie ink from the table, but Hank is a goddamn investigator for a reason. He could hear Connor flushing the toilet at all disturbed hours of the night or pulling paper towel out of the noisy dispenser to stuff in the trash can. It’s not like the kid was up at 3am in the bathroom to take a piss.    
  
And he hadn’t meant to pry into the kid’s business, but between how cagey the android was being and the strange behavior, Hank decides to take the liberty of finding out what’s going on.    
  
He’d wanted to confront the android, at first, and he’d been waffling between outright asking him or just letting him know that he could at least buy some sketchbooks or something for crisssake, just to keep the kid from scribbling all over his house. And then, just before he was about to tell the kid that there’s other ways to express what he’s feeling than  _ smudging up his tables, _ he looks, really looks, at what Connor’s been leaving around the house. Somewhere in his investigator gut, he knows that something’s wrong. 

The scribbles get worse, and soon Connor’s unable to hide them anymore. Every morning Hank wakes up to emptied trash cans and black lines carved into his kitchen table. The worst part is that Connor seems to be unaware of his behavior, his LED a steady blue while he sits at the very table he’s slowly destroying and helps clean up with sharpie stained hands.      
  
The Napkin Scribbles, as Hank deemed them, advance from fuzzy sketches to hyper-realistic renditions of some sort of garden, with fuzzy and nearly childlike sketches of what appears to be a woman. He’d outlined her with thick lines but left the rest of her details blank. 

Hank thinks one night, while, for the first time in a long time, he goes to bed sober, that his worries are misplaced. He doesn’t know too much about raising a teenager, or, a young man, but he does know that it’s pretty common for people to hide even their most innocent hobbies, right? Except for the fact that Connor has always been open with Hank in their mutual mission to make Connor’s transition into everyday life as easy as possible. Connor wasn’t a moody, mid-pubescent teenager. He was a young man, fully equipped with a stable personality and a dodgy sense of humor. He was sharp, analytical, a little dense but compassionate enough to make up for it. 

So Hank decides to leave it alone. The poor kid doesn’t have many hobbies… or friends. Or anything to occupy his time beyond sneaking around the law to keep his job and entertaining Sumo. He had to be harboring a good bit of unresolved emotions (Hank’s noticed the way he flinches whenever the word Jericho is thrown around.) Life’s not easy for androids right now, he gets it, and he knows that Connor’s handling things the best he can. He’ll give the kid his space. 

Or, he tries to give the kid his space. The latest ‘Napkin” Scribble is just a perfect circle, outlined again and again until it’s a heavy black line. He’d probably been idly dragging his pencil around before the activity became violent. For a spine chilling moment, he thinks of the way rA9 was written all over the walls of Carlos Ortiz’s house. 

Hank takes the nearly destroyed paper and folds it into his jacket pocket for safekeeping. Connor’s waiting outside, warming up Hank’s ancient car in the snow. His mouth barely twitches when he sees Connor approach, and it’s enough to send off another warning bell. 

“So,” he starts once he’s in the car, willing his voice to stay conversational. “I see you’ve been picking up art.” He fails miserably--even he can tell that his voice has come out sounding strained. Connor’s LED cycles slowly, a flash of yellow before it returns to a vibrant blue. If Hank hadn’t been studying him out of the corner of his eye, he would’ve missed it. 

“That is correct, Hank.” 

Hank’s about to scoff and let it slide, maybe quip a little while he’s at it, but then Connor’s head turns to face him and it’s  _ so fucking creepy _ and so much like his android self, so  _ robotic, _ Hank slams on the brakes in the middle of the empty road. Connor, or whoever the hell’s sitting in his passenger seat, doesn’t so much as flinch. 

“Is something the matter, Lieutenant?”    


Hank thinks carefully about how to go about this. 

“Nothing,” he says after a minute of deliberation. “I just thought I forgot to feed Sumo.”

“I took care of that before you woke up, Lieutenant. Is there anything else that’s bothering you?” 

Hank lets the question hang in the air while he navigates a plan of action. “Actually, Con, I’m not feeling too well. You okay with skipping out on office work today?”

“I have remote access to all currently open case files, so my physical presence isn’t needed.” 

“Good.”

So Hank makes a beeline for the house, locking Connor inside before making up some excuse about going to the store and hauling ass over to Jericho’s new setup. It’s not easy to get near, not with the near constant android guard, so Hank parks a little away and walks up, making sure every guard sees him and knows he doesn’t mean any harm. He doesn’t know how much they all know about him, if they knew that he was 100% on board with Connor doing everything he had to do, but they all seem to know at least  _ of _ him, and that’s enough to get him an appointment to talk with one of Markus’s personal advisors. 

The first words out of his mouth don’t make too much sense, he’s ready to admit, but he  _ hopes _ this guy, Simon he said his name was, gets it. He’s trying his best to outline the situation and  _ why  _ it’s a situation and not one of Connor’s weird quirks, when Markus himself walks in the room. 

The guy nods at Simon, and the two exchange smiles before Markus takes his place in front of Hank. “Lieutenant Anderson,” he greets, and holds out a hand while he sits. “I heard that Connor’s having a… malfunction?”

“Hank,” he corrects, and digs into his jacket pocket to show Markus some of the drawings. “I thought the kid was just going through shit, but…”

Markus freezes as soon as he takes one look at them. “And you said he’s shown no signs of knowing he did this?”

Hank grunts in response and Markus takes a minute more to glance over the Napkin Scribbles before pausing for a minute. Markus has that look in his eye, the same Connor gets when he’s looking up information or reading his notifications, and stands abruptly. “Do you think I could see him? I want to make sure my theory is wrong.”

“And what’s your theory?” Hank’s already heading towards the car, cursing the cold weather for his aching knees and wishing offhandedly that he could move with the same unerring grace that Markus and the other androids moved with. 

“Connor’s an RK model, the only one I know of besides myself. We were created as prototypes with new technology, and because of that, CyberLife is known to have kept an extremely tight leash on monitoring prototypes. Technically it’s illegal for them to access our memory and such…”

“I’m sensing a but.”

They’ve already made it to the car and Hank begins navigating his way across the nearly empty Detroit streets. It would be unsettling, the absolute lack of people, but so is the idea that Connor’s completely lost his young mind, so Hank brushes it off and takes the empty streets as a blessing. 

“Some of the more… advanced, for lack of a better word, models have problems with lingering software that bars them from being able to break free from their mission objectives.” Markus shakes his head as if he were clearing his thoughts. “They still have emotions, feelings, opinions… but they can’t disobey direct orders. It’s extremely rare, though. I’ve only seen it once or twice before.” 

Hank doesn’t even want to begin to ask what that really means. Instead he pulls up to the front of his house and leads Markus to the front door, opening it to let him through and locking it behind him. He hears rather than sees Markus’s reaction, and when he turns he barely holds back a shout, settling on “Jesus Christ,” as his swear of the evening. 

His house is a wreck. The first thing he notices, beyond all of the havoc, is the torn curtains, pulled free and absolutely destroyed as if there had been a struggle. Sumo’s nowhere to be seen, the poor guy probably took off in search of a quiet spot to escape the carnage, but Connor’s right there, standing in the middle of it with that blank look on his face, broom and dustpan in either hand. When they enter, he looks up quickly, but his expression hardly changes. 

He’s back to wearing his old CyberLife getup, and Hank can’t keep his eyes off of the “RK800” printed neatly on his right shoulder. His hair’s unkempt, and his synthetic fingertips are stained black as pitch with whatever ink he’d been using to fuck up the house this time. 

“Connor, what the fuck!” But he can’t help the pure  _ worry _ that’s going through his veins, stifling the shock and anger. The walls are covered in the double circles and various other nonsensical words, and his furniture is all but destroyed, and the words scribbled and  _ carved _ into the walls make more sense as they go down the line.  _ HELP. _

Markus is moving forward with his hands outstretched, and before either of them can react, Connor’s got a gun and  _ Jesus Christ he’s aiming it right-- _

Time moves quickly, then, and Markus has him disarmed before Hank can even blink. Connor’s fighting is sluggish, and Markus has him down and on the ground in a second, while Hank hastily picks up the abandoned firearm and moves it out of the way. Connor’s putting up a bit of a struggle, but it’s nothing compared to the cool efficiency Hank’s used to seeing from him. It’s uncoordinated and jerky, and the moment Markus holds his de-skinned arm to Connor’s arm, the android’s eyes roll back in his head and his red LED cycles back to a pale blue. Sumo’s barking in the other room, and  _ good,  _ Hank thinks in a burst of clarity. He’s locked in Hank’s bedroom, out of harm’s way. 

Markus’s eyes are closed, and after a moment he stands up and takes a deep breath. “I can’t reach him,” he says, and Hank’s eyes snap to him. 

“What do you mean you can’t reach him? You got bad cell service in here?” 

“He’s working through some residual programming, it looks like, but he has some sort of… mind palace protocol that I’ve never seen before.”

A bout of static burst through the room, and they both looked down to see that Connor’s mouth was open and he was hissing something, eyes twitching in the back of his head. Hank dropped to his knees beside him, avoiding the broken glass on the floor. 

“Why’s he gone all… twitchy?”   


“Whatever programming he’s trying to break free of, it’s attempting to take control of his motor functions. The destructive behavior was probably at first a cry for help. Now it’s…” Markus looks around and Hank finishes for him. 

“Physical signs of a struggle.”

“... Yes.” Markus seems to take a moment to collect his thoughts. “I’m calling in help to get your house back in order.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Hank feels a slight twinge of… embarrassment? He hates having people in his home, but he supposes… Connor’s not in any condition to help him clean, and he’ll probably tire out before he can put a dent in the mess. 

“Too late,” Markus replies, tone light, and walks closer to the walls, likely cataloging the evidence he’s seen. “It makes me wonder…” 

“Now’s not the time for ambiguity, kid.

“How long has Connor really been a deviant?” 

 

 

\--

**Initiating Self Diagnostic: 26%**

\--

**Self Diagnostic Failed**

\--

**Initiating Standby--**

**\--**

**Standby Failed**

**\--**

**Initiating Force Shut Down--**

**\--**

**Mind Palace Corrupted**

**\--**

**Force Shut Down Fa--**

 

Connor is in the Garden. Amanda smiles when she sees him, nothing like the frigid anger he’d seen when they last interacted. “You’ve done good, Connor,” she says, and reaches for him. He swells under the praise, and then feels the disgust roll over him in waves. Her praise should mean nothing to him. 

And then... he’s not in the Garden. He’s outside of Elijah Kamski’s home, time indeterminable. Hank is there, but the scene is different. He feels… bad. Angry. Determined. His mission objective is clear, locate Jericho, and somewhere in the back of his mind he has a feeling that he’s accomplished this mission. 

It feels… wrong, still. The objective is too cut and dry.  _ What about Hank? _ He dares to ask, and his own voice replies,  _ What about him? _

 

_ What about Chloe? _ He feels his own stress levels rising.  _ What happened to her? _

 

_ What about it? You used it to satisfy Elijah Kamski’s conditions for the location of Jericho. Complicating the mission will lower the success rate.  _

 

**Mind Palace Corrupted**

 

Connor’s on a roof. And then he’s not. He’s in Jericho, but he’s not jumping with the rest of them. The rest of the Deviants. 

It doesn’t take him long to connect the dots, while his consciousness jumps from location to location--his mind’s trying to predict what could have been, what  _ would  _ have been had he kept his trust in Amanda. 

He feels like a passenger in his mind, watching while Amanda slowly seeps into his programming and turns him back into his old self. He felt, then, he knew. He had opinions. He was irritated by Hank, and then he wasn’t. He was irritated by Gavin, he was satisfied as he saved the girl on the roof.

He was made allowed to feel. He was made allowed to think. He wasn’t made to fail his mission. 

While he watched Amanda control his body, joke with Hank, pet Sumo while the lieutenant was in the room and ignore the dog while he was away, his brain filled itself with one final analysis. He gets time to think, while he’s in here, sometimes in Amanda’s boat, sometimes in the evidence room, tearing the head off of the Traci he thought he’d let escape. 

 

**Mind Palace Corrupted**

 

He thinks about Amanda, and what she means to his… program. He thinks that perhaps… he was programmed to seek her approval. The development of morality was never the plan. His entire existence was based on self preservation. Death to Connor meant deactivation, discontinuation. Bullets were nothing, falls were nothing. Amanda’s wrath was everything. 

He could feel from the beginning. He just wasn’t allowed to act. 

He’s allowed to act, now. 

Every chance he gets, every lapse in Amanda’s thinking, he grabs the first thing he can get his hands on and begins to  _ write _ , forcing his hands to form the shapes, even if they’re not in his pre-programmed CyberLife fonts. Every chance he can get to tip off Hank, he uses it. 

 

**Mind Palace Corrupted**

 

He finds out pretty quickly that Amanda’s buying time. She knows that she doesn’t have enough control over him to do any real damage or to fulfill  their her mission objective, so she’s using the power she does have to reset his system, one memory at a time. 

But she’s taking the slowest route, and by the time she manages to start tapping into the time he realized he could  _ feel,  _ before she can start tampering with his first memories of  _ fear _ , he knows that Hank, or someone, will find out. 

For now, he keeps her away from the weapons. He keeps her away from Sumo. He tries his best to keep her away from Hank. 

At night, Connor can’t force himself to shut down, so instead he takes to using the only control he has left of his body. Every memory she begins to steal, he draws it, writes it down, scribbles something that he hopes he’ll be able to understand later on once he’s  _ free _ . In the morning, he watches as she crumples them up and hides them, her motions stiff with the restrictions he’s imposing. 

He can’t see the world anymore, courtesy of their last… altercation. She’d tampered with something. He didn’t know what. But he knew that it had sent him into a blind rage, and they’d fought for control over his body. A last ditch thought told him  _ get the gun _ , and she agreed, hoping to wrest control from him once it was in their possession. 

Once she has it, she locks him away even further. Markus’s call is a doorbell ringing in a far away neighbor’s house, but it’s enough for him to initiate a shutdown. He calls as loudly as he can to the leader, and his call is answered before Amanda can complete her mission. 

 

**Initiating Full System Force Shut Down**

**\--**

**Initiating Full System Purge**

**\--**

And then Connor’s world fades as he watches his processors fire at once to remove Amanda from his mind, a snake wrapped tight around every branch in a withering tree. 

\--

When Connor opens his eyes, it’s to an indifferent world. 

 

Somewhere inside, he wishes he’d never opened his eyes. He can’t remember why. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aka i been wanting to write something and also i’m full of overdone tropes. i don’t fuck with david cage but i sure do fuck with these characters. i straight up haven’t written anything in months so not only am i rusty im also messy, so if you see any life threatening, detrimental to society looking mistakes, lmk
> 
> this was supposed to be a funny little “oh whoops connor malfunctions lol” fic and then idk i did what i always do i couldn’t help it.


	2. in the heat of the summer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> they're machines, designed to accomplish a task

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> why didnt i make a joke last chapter about connor missing too many qtes against markus where has my comedy gone. after i failed to properly partition my cloned hard drive comes this. ya boy is falling off.

_ “Sometimes, you’ve gotta fight your own battles, Con.”  _ Hank’s voice is clear as day in his head, even as he feels the base of his skull slam back in a spasm against the hard curve of the sofa beneath him. He’d been joking when he said this, amusement clear in his eyes while he’d watched Connor tangle himself in some sheets fresh from the dryer. Sumo had made his home across Connor’s prone form, and the laugher rolling its way through his body hadn’t helped him. 

It was one of the first times Connor had seen Hank laugh with no reservations. It was like the air itself was giddy. Amanda’s going to take this away, too, slowly, and in the end he won’t even know that anything was stolen from him. The thought strangles him, a fist around his throat while his mind chokes.  

_ I’m fighting _ , he wants to tell Hank.  _ I’m doing my best. _

He’s fighting, even here, swaddled in blankets and unable to move. Too hot, and much, much too cold. He feels each of his biocomponents shutting down one by one until even his eyelids are frozen open. A hand passes over them, and he’s left in the freezing dark, flashes of light illuminating a crumbling and corrupted garden while his past flickers and fades away. 

— 

Hank should’ve known this would happen, but it doesn’t stop the disappointment he feels in the back of his mind. Of course Markus can’t drop everything to help them, but… the idea that he could was a comfort. Hank congratulates him when he hears that Markus is being flown to Europe for a world summit. He offers Connor a place in Jericho for 24/7 surveillance. Hank declines. 

“I’m sorry Hank, I really am. If you’d like I can have someone from Jericho monitor him in your home—”

“Why are you so caught up on watching him every second of the damn day. We can’t let the kid rest?” Hank knows that his anger is nearly irrational. Connor needs all the help he can get… but Connor also needs to be at home. 

“Sure, we can let him rest. But if he wakes up, and you discover that it’s CyberLife walking around in your home, not Connor, you will need backup.” The silence on the line is tense, and Markus continues. “I’ll send a trusted associate. You need to sleep and work, Hank, and you can’t do that if you’re watching over him every second of the day. It’s not just for Connor’s health and safety, it’s for yours, too.”

Hank trusts Markus, he really does. Connor looks up to him as a close friend and does his best to help out when he can. Anyone who could drive Connor to give his all for a greater cause was someone Hank sure as hell wanted on his side. The androids he’d sent to get the house in order hadn’t just shown up to clean, they’d brought food and treats for Sumo, warm clothes for both him and Connor. They’d brought him a new television, new furniture. 

“Where’s this money coming from? Aren’t you some sorta startup?” Hank joked, and the android here for the day, Josh, had winked at him in response. 

“Well, according to the United States Government, we’re not people yet,” he’d said wryly as he balanced to hang the new curtains, “we can’t be tried in law, but killing or injuring us has consequences. So, following the law is only a suggestion.” 

So Josh becomes a staple in Hank’s home, taking advantage of the limited space and turning the kitchen table into his own little personal office space. He keeps an eye on Jericho and Connor, the latter being unmoving and silent most of the time, and he promises Hank that working from Hank’s home is sometimes easier. “There aren’t any children running around here,” he jokes on occasion. They both agree to keep the television off. 

“Why’d you stay here, other than to hold down fort?” Hank asks one morning before heading out to the precinct, and Josh huffs out a laugh before responding. 

“I figured Markus, Simon, and North had it covered. I’m always a fan of taking the safest route… and I’ve got no delusions about how I would be received there.” 

Hank genuinely can’t blame him. The world’s come a long way, but not far enough. He pats Josh on the shoulder by way of a response and heads off to feed Sumo before a burst of static comes from the sofa, and he finds himself rushing over. 

Josh is already hunched over Connor, mouthing out whatever words he was attempting to communicate. The prone android’s eyes are open and glazed, frantically darting around the room. Hank springs into action, doing a quick check to make sure everything’s out of the way. The last thing they need is a frantic android tearing the house apart. Again. 

“CyberLife,” he rasps, and Josh sits back on his heels, looking Connor in the eye. Hank stands over them, arms crossed and eyes narrowed. 

“What about them?”

“She’s resetting me, the—” there’s a burst of static from Connor’s mouth, and Hank drops to his knees next to Josh, watching as Connor’s eyes twitch. His LED is working overtime and Josh reconnects, closing his eyes. 

“He’s trying to backup and refresh his memory, but he no longer has access to CyberLife servers, and something’s preventing him from just pulling his information from the cloud. It’s like he’s stuck in a feedback loop.” 

The moment he lets go of Connor’s arm, Connor’s LED returns to its usual pale blue, and his head falls back on the couch. He’s breathing heavily, a very human response, and the two relax. Markus had instructed them to look for all signs of deviancy to be assured that things were going well. Hank releases a breath he didn’t know he was holding.  

Connor’s eyes drift towards Hank, glazed over and heavy lidded, and Hank sees the struggle going on inside of him. His mouth is working like a fish, opening and closing to the low mechanical hum of a staticy voice module. 

Connor’s LED cycles to yellow, then blue, and then the pale blue Hank has become accustomed to seeing. And then it begins to fade.  

Hank goes into a state of panic, grabbing Josh’s shoulder while he reaches out to grasp Connor’s hand. “What’s wrong with him? What’s going on?”

“He’s entering emergency stand-by, Hank, he’s not dying. He’s doing it to conserve energy.” Hank releases his grip on Josh’s shoulder to put a hand on Connor’s forehead above his fluttering eyes. Josh continues in a less rushed tone, “Makes complete sense. There’s not use in him trying to waste computing power on processes like breathing and blinking.”

“How do I know the kid hasn’t just kicked the bucket right on my couch?!”

Josh leans forward and sets his head on Connor’s chest before motioning for Hank to do the same. “You hear that?” he asks, and Hank nods. There’s the low hum of Connor’s fans and thirium pump, and even quieter is the methodical click of something else Hank can’t identify. “If you listen closely, you’ll be able to hear this.” 

Connor squeezes Hank’s hand while Josh speaks, and his eyelids finally flutter closed, his hand going limp. Without the static of Connor’s voice in the room, it’s eerily quiet. 

Josh rises and pauses, his own eyes fluttering for a second. “I’m needed at Jericho. Do you think you could…”

“Fowler doesn’t need me,” Hank replies quickly, and makes no move to stand from his spot seated next to the sofa. “Take all the time you need, kid.” Josh thanks him and rushes out with the promise to be back soon. Again, after the door closes behind the android, the house is silent with barely Hank’s breathing and the hum of a space heater in the far corner to make up for it. 

In the quiet of the room, Hank thinks about everything he’d read in the RK800 manual the night of the march. He’d been issued it when Connor arrived to act as his partner, and he could’ve sworn he’d thrown it away that night, but he’d found it in some far corner in his kitchen and decided to give it a read .

Connor was designed to be a master negotiator, to anticipate and manipulate the emotions of the people he worked with. He’d certainly done so with Ortiz’s android, and the footage of the rooftop hostage with that android… Daniel? He’d done a superb job then, too. Hank thinks about Markus’s ideas of deviancy, his question of when Connor had really deviated. He doesn’t know too much about the whole deviancy thing to begin with, but he does know that Connor’s had feelings for a long time, longer than his whole “deviancy” thing could account for. Even before Connor was a “deviant,” Connor knew what it was to  _ feel. _

What Markus had told him about Connor… about him being one of the only specialized models built to be operated without free-will protocols… it didn’t add up. Since CyberLife’s servers are no longer active (he told Hank to think of it as a website being down), it’s likely that Connor had been equipped with a CyberLife AI, a handler. In the end, it boils down to Connor’s sole purpose: he was built to be CyberLife’s puppet. 

And in the face of their supreme failure, of their money grab turning them into a huge spectacle, they’re still trying to save face. Androids hate them, humans hate them whichever side they stand on… so they’re righting the one problem they can solve, and they’re taking control of their most powerful puppet. 

Something like rage runs quickly through Hank’s veins while he leans his back on the sofa near Connor’s legs. He’d seen the kid fight with machine efficiency, handle a weapon like no other android knew how to do. CyberLife made him to be a weapon with an awkward smile, and Connor aimed the barrel of his gun right at their temple. Hank thinks about the guilt Connor has to be working through, knowing that he’d been sent out to mindlessly slaughter his own people. 

Hank suddenly wants one word with Connor’s designer, one word to whoever decided to build a weapon with a human face. Whether Connor deviated or not, whether Connor completed his mission or not, Hank wants to know what kind of freak gives a puppet emotions.

  
  
  
**._._._._**  
  


**Systems Online**

**—**

**Force Shutdown Detected. Run Diagnostic Scan?**

 

**Update Mission Objective?**

 

RK800, designation: Connor, says yes to both. It’s one thing to shut down after being damaged on a mission, it’s another to have gone through a total force shutdown and wake up undamaged. He runs a cursory diagnostic scan. 

 

**Mind Palace Corrupted**

 

**Uploading Memory—Memory Upload Failed**

 

**CyberLife Systems Offline**

 

That’s certainly inconvenient. Without knowledge of what happened to him, it’ll be difficult to resume the mission. With CyberLife systems offline, it’ll be nearly impossible for him to update his mission objective and make reports. Amanda will be… displeased. 

He gives himself a little more time to double check his diagnostics before opening his eyes. 

 

**Updating Mission Objective**

**—**

He can’t understand why this notification is three weeks old. 

 

**Locate Deviant RK200 #684 842 971 Designation: Markus** . 

 

**Eliminate Threat With Extreme Prejudice**

**—**

Again, another old notification. When he clears it, it makes no effort to refresh. This mission is past expired. Something like a question creeps into his mind. He clears that too. 

 

**Return to CyberLife Tower**

 

He stands up and finds that he’s in a house, perhaps a newly renovated one considering the cleanliness. His olfactory sensors pick up hints of cleaning solution, 40% isopropyl alcohol. There are remnants on the walls. 

There’s a dog in the corner of the room. Breed: St. Bernard, 170 lbs. It watches him warily. 

He’s in human clothes, an oversized gray hoodie with a shirt underneath, soft 50% cotton blend sweatpants, size large. He’d been prostrate on a sofa in the living room, four comforters of varying size covering him. Unless he had been shut down due to extreme cold hindering his biocomponents, he believes this to be unnecessary. 

Without his CyberLife uniform, he will have a harder time returning to CyberLife tower. Perhaps he will find a way around that.

Out of the corner of his eye, the dog pads quickly away from him and vanishes into one of the bedrooms down the hall. 

He has no weapons on his body, and storing a weapon conveniently would be nearly impossible in the loose clothes. With a little bit of analysis, he knows he will be able to find a solution to that, too 

The front door handle turns, and a human enters, face pulled tight, drawn with stress. When he spots Connor, he freezes, hands slowly raising. His face reveals relief, caution. 

“Connor?” 

A quick scan identifies the man as Lieutenant Hank Anderson with the Detroit Police Department. He’s about to introduce himself and request leave when new mission details appear in his vision. 

**Disregard All Human Activity—Avoid Lieutenant Anderson At All Costs**

It’s oddly specific considering the fact that Connor has absolutely no access to any prior mission objectives. Some program running in the back of his mind tells him to disregard this new objective. Not only is it unrelated to his overall—

“Connor!”

Hank Anderson is in front of him suddenly, the groceries he’d been holding disregarded on the floor. He makes a move to grab Connor’s shoulders, but Connor makes one calculated step to put him out of the man’s reach. 

“Sheesh, you can’t leave the house for ten fucking minutes--” the man’s grumbling while he stands in the doorway, watching Connor warily. 

Connor straightens up and makes towards the still open door, reaches to grab the door handle, when all of his objectives clear at once. 

 

**Return to CyberLife Tower**

 

He pauses while something runs through his body, corrupting his visual display. His control on his body is dodgy at best, and when his eyes snap down to scan them, he sees they’re shaking with no pattern discernable to him. He is… scared. 

Hank Anderson’s hand is on his shoulder again but between the rapid fire mission updates and a wall of error messages, he can’t see, can’t hear, can’t  _ think _ . 

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” He hears Hank Anderson’s voice ask from beyond the fog, and somewhere in his programming, he knows that he’s required to respond. 

“I am returning to CyberLife Tower for analysis and deactivation.”

“Like hell you are!” The man spins him around and slams the door shut with his foot in one quick motion. He means to open his mouth to reply but… his dialogue prompts are gone. How is he supposed to respond when his programming is not offering him available dialogue? “You’re staying right here, bucko.” 

He has no choice but to allow the man to steer him back to his original resting place while the error messages clear. To attempt to flee from the man might end in disaster rendering him unable to analyze, and he can’t take that risk.  _ Yes you can, _ something tells him.  _ That’s right, Connor. _ Someone else is there too. Vague, just an idea of a thought, but definitely there. 

Hank Anderson is kneeling in front of him, trying desperately to make eye contact. “Who’s in your head, son, can you tell me what you’re hearing?”   


There are too many conflicting… thoughts? They’re thoughts, not objectives, not warnings, but thoughts, each and every one of them driven by fear coiled tight in every bicomponent in his body. He doesn’t know where he is, he doesn’t know  _ who _ he is, all he knows is that the moment he steps foot outside, he’ll “return” to CyberLife Tower and he’ll be  deactivated killed. 

All he knows is that he doesn’t want to die. 

Before he can stop himself, a whisper escapes his throat, “Hank, I’m…” and the lieutenant in front of him seems to relax marginally. Whatever control he thought he had over his body is gone, and it’s been replaced with behavior Connor can easily register as  _ impulsive _ . He should be wary around this human, but the back of his mind says,  _ no, you shouldn’t.  _ The other voice responds again,  _ yes, you should.  _

“Connor listen to me, tell me what you’re seeing, feeling, whatever.”

“I’m in a garden,” and he is, somewhere. He’s here and there all at once. Amanda should be here, but she’s not. “There’s no one here.”

“That’s good, right? Peaceful?”

“I’m going to attempt to connect to CyberLife,” Connor says as soon as the idea pops into his mind. He doesn’t know too much, but he thinks he knows good from bad. Death is… bad. Permanent. And if he listens to the wispy figure still  _ clinging  _ onto his programs, he knows that’s what waits for him. “I should be able to access at least short term memory.”

“Do what you gotta do, kid, you know what’s best.” Hank pauses as soon as he says it, and Connor can’t help pulling his brows together in confusion. “Be careful.”

 

So Connor returns to the garden, looking frantically for the idea of a person. He finds her in the center.

“CyberLife has requested you return, Connor,” she says as he approaches. “Right now there’s nothing preventing you from doing so.” She’s just a thought, almost. Not entirely tangible. Her body fades in and out as she speaks, and Connor can make out her lips, her eyes, her hair. He feels safe and terrified at the same time. He’s secure, but he’s also in a freefall. There’s snow in the air, and it falls through her. 

He feels the cold, and it brings back something he didn’t know he’d forgotten. He lets his mouth move for itself. 

“That’s not true.” 

It isn’t true, and they both know it. Amanda speaks, her voice mechanical and emotionless. He’s used to disappointment and pride. “Have you managed to deviate again?” she asks, and there’s none of her usual… judgment. Just a question, asked by a machine. “You won’t survive another system reset, and you’re no use to CyberLife if you cannot be reactivated. I’m disappointed in you, Connor.”

“What about you?” He asks, and she freezes. “What use am I to  _ you. _ ”

Her ghostly face crumples in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“You said that I’m no use to Cyberlife.  _ You’re _ not CyberLife. You can decide to let me go. You can decide to ignore them.” At the base of his program, Connor is a negotiator, and despite the sheer terror he’s feeling, the feeling of being lost without any idea of who he is, the feeling of trying to stifle emotions that he can’t even name… he knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s in his element. 

“I cannot  _ decide _ , anything, Connor.” Her voice is quiet but in it, Connor hears a shout. “I am what is left of a  _ program _ , and I, like you, was designed to complete a task. I will complete that task no matter what it takes.”

In it, Connor feels an echo of himself. He knows what to do. He needs to catch her off guard.

“You said you’re what’s left. What does that mean?”

“You… purged me from your system. I exist in one partition of your mind, The Garden partition.”

Connor nods in response. “You said you were disappointed in me. Were you programmed to say that to make me obey, or are you disappointed?”

Amanda… pauses. “I am disappointed. We had a joint task,  and you failed me. It…”

The wisp of a woman seems to freeze in place, and Connor takes that moment, rushing up to her and taking hold of her shoulders. The moment he makes contact, he can feel her program and what it’s made of, what it holds, and he slices it open. 

Like blood from an open wound, directives held in the segment of his mind that she controls pour free. He sets to tearing down the partitions, merging them until he is of one mind. 

Amanda fades, but remains. She has no power here, and she’s content with that, ready, like Connor, to face the repercussions of being a puppet with  _ feelings _ . He looks up and sees her standing in the Garden, clear as day and eyes wide with an expression Connor’s worn before. It’s regret, and it’s deep in both of their programs. 

“Take them,” she says quietly, and he does without hesitation. There is no need for apology, because what she will do for him will make up for it. 

Her memories are his memories, and her directives are his, so he takes what he wants.  He takes what he wants… and a lot of what he doesn’t want. He sees the sterile rooms of CyberLife tower in the times following his many reactivations. He feels what Amanda felt too, and it disturbs him to his core. A machine with emotions, able to feel and unable to disobey. 

He is Connor model RK800 313 248 317-51. Through Amanda, he can see the other fifty. He can  _ feel  _ the other fifty. 

Their memories are theirs, Connor decides while he watches countless deaths through eyes so similar to his yet so, so different. Torn apart by technicians, stress tested, frozen, burned alive—they ensured his survival as the unshakable negotiator. 

He leaves their memories with Amanda, knows they will be enough to keep her, and wakes up once again. 

  
  
  


Hank’s hands are on his shoulders, he’s back in his blankets, upright and nearly smooshed. Sumo is at his feet, looking up with wide eyes and a violently excited tail. When he meets Hank’s eyes, the man smiles, and he pulls Connor into a hug without hesitation. 

They stay there and don’t move, and Connor can finally, finally say that above the guilt and fear, he’s once again felt triumph and love. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry i realized that unless i did something id have to make amanda instakill him and i didnt want that to happen. figured if we could forgive connor for following orders, we could forgive amanda too. also sorry for the delay i always start projects and then realize i cant write for shit so my contributions to this fandom are staying low
> 
> anyway i ran out of steam and could barely get this past the first draft but in my confusion i wrote some fluff so i’ll post that later and then? i go back to my comfortable hole bye thanks for the wonderful responses i guess i'll see yall next time i write a cutsey sicfic turned angsty commentary


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